Page 93 of The Mortal Queen

“Obviously,” Peitho added, annoyance tightening her voice.

“Where is he?” Aisling blurted, eyes darting towards the light emerging from the hole in the ceiling as though the fae king would be standing there, waiting for her.

“He’s travelling towards neutral ground as we speak,” Peitho said and again Gilrel scowled at the princess. “To attend my union,” Peitho continued, her feline eyes sharpening with every word. Aisling’s own eyes went wide. Of course. Theunion. Aisling had almost forgotten.

“By sunset this evening, Lir will inform the fire hand that his daughter was drowned by the empress of the dryads.”

Aisling winced at the words. He couldn’t. It would destroy, ruin, everything. Everything Aisling had sacrificed for.

“Filverel forced Lir to leave Annwyn for the sake of the Sidhe. He fought Filverel for weeks, for Lir believed you still alive, lost somewhere in between,” Gilrel explained.

“With a new political union between our kind, there would be no better occasion to break the news to your father that you’d died. That and a council was already needed between our kind to discuss a certain princeling’s correspondence concerning the Unseelie.” Peitho smirked, eyes wandering towards the murals on the wall.

Gilrel searched Aisling’s expression. “Lir only agreed to leave Annwyn if a party remained behind to continue the search for you until he returned. Peitho is still here?—”

“Lest I lose what shred of sanity I still harbor. I was amongst those who believed your frail mortal bones disintegrated at the bottom of the gorge. Indeed, hunting a ghost is a fine distraction for tomorrow’s dread.”

Tomorrow? A single day was all that stood between Peitho and Dagfin’s union.

“Myself and a handful of others planned to ride tonight and join Lir by morning,” Peitho said, running her delicate fingers across the mural’s stones.

“No,” Aisling interrupted, her voice sharp. “We leave now.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

Skalla, the Aos Sí had whispered as Gilrel and Peitho pulled Aisling from the well and out of the aqueducts.

Skalla, they’d chanted, the roar of their collective voices no different in sound than the susurration of the rustling forest craning their leafy heads to behold the spectacle.

The world had spun around Aisling; Annwyn had spun as her head swiveled, soaking in the hundreds of fair folk and their bipedal beasts surrounding her as she emerged. The hatred in their uptilted eyes only rivalled by their newfound fear, forcing mothers and fathers to pull their curious, rare children back into their homes, their giant, wooded hollows whose oaks and ashes and pines whipped nervously in the wind.

Skalla, the trees cursed.

“It means thief,” Gilrel had told her as she bathed the mortal queen. As the magpies, as quick as angry bees, laced her black opal gown—cloaked in spider-webs inlaid with petrified rain by the pixies—brushed her tangled ringlets, and painted her face with coal around her eyes and cherries on her lips. Lips that drank and ate as insatiably as the Aos Sí themselves.

“Danu’s prophecy spread through the surrounding Unseelie like dandelion seeds, till even the Sidhe knew of her visions.”

Aisling, Galad, Rian, and Gilrel tore through Annwyn’s flagstone streets, into the surrounding woodland, and towards neutral ground with Peitho’s bridal carriage following swiftly behind. Raced without reverence to the gathering fae spectators, leaning from their cottage doors, their canopies, their wind chimes, their shops, and chores to behold the raven-haired queen fleeing on an ivory stag. The afternoon sighs tearing at her curls, billowing behind her like ribbons of ink.

Did the others—Galad, Rian, Gilrel, Peitho, and the bears pulling her carriage—feel the energy coursing through the overcast sky, through the sweeping winds, the twisting trees, the beasts they mounted? Is that why Galad’s knuckles grew white the tighter he gripped his reins? Why Rian fiddled with a charm on his necklace? Why Gilrel said not a word to Aisling as they rode as quick as the stags would carry them?

Aisling heard the drums before the forest thinned. The pounding of the fae instruments beat to the rhythm of the thunderous groans resounding overhead. The flashing of the lightning as it webbed throughout the sky.

Aisling held her breath. The cloak of the woodland was parting as she and the Aos Sí alongside her emerged from the wilderness and into the great verdant valleys. Fields shadowed by the steep cliffs of the northernmost mountains. And at their base, rested a circle of firelit torches, tents, and hordes of speck-like figures that grew as Aisling approached. Just as it had been the night of her union. Except then, Aisling had witnessed the world through a scarlet veil.

They were close. Her kind, they were moments away. Not a dream like she often felt they now were. The mortal queen’s stomach sprung into her throat, pushing until she was unable to swallow. With every beat of the fae drummirroring the staccato of her pulse.

Even from a distance Aisling could make out who was who; like a chessboard, the mortals wore their dimly hued tartans, the stench of iron carried on the northern winds, and on the opposing side stood the Aos Sí mounted on their ivory stags. Mortal banners violently folding with crests and colors: the crimson flags of Tilren, the royal blue of Roktling, the bronze of Kinbreggan, and the ivory of Aithirn.

Her clann. Lir, they were all there. Beneath the shadow of the same stone giant.

“The Sidhe, Aisling,” Gilrel had said as she’d followed the mortal queen down a spiral staircase back in Castle Annwyn. “The Sidhe believe you rose from the dead.”

And as they drove their mounts into the sleeping field, the drums stopped.

CHAPTER XXIX

Petrified, Clodagh gaped at her daughter, the harsh lines of her face loosening as her jaw went slack. A shock many of the surrounding mortals mirrored. A collective curse hung in the air between them all. Shared. Annind, Fergus, the king of Roktling who’d known her since she was a bairn, the lady of Aithirn who’d gifted Aisling her first gelding on her tenth year.

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